We’ve Redesigned The Dynamics AX Companions eBook Store – Hip, hip, hooray!

Over the past couple of weeks we have been working on tidying up the Dynamics AX Companions eBook store (shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) in preparation for the merge of the store and the sister resource site (www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) and I am happy to announce that we have made a little progress.

If you visit the eBook store (http://bit.ly/1ppjiA9) now you will see that all of the guides are a little more organized and also there is the ability to filter the guides by functional area, by Bare Bones Configuration Guide module, and also by Dynamics AX version so that you can see if any of the guides apply to AX 2012, R2, R2, and even AX7 – we are in the process of upgrading all of the guides to the new version of Dynamics AX so watch out for more news on these guides.

Also we have taken a play from the Beanie Baby franchise and retired some of the guides that are now obsolete or replaced with the newer (Second Edition) guides so that ther are not cluttering up the store and will make it easier for you to find just the resources that you are looking for.

The website content is now grouped by series to help you find what you need.

The Bare Bones Configuration Guides (http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/all/series_bare-bones-configuration-guides) section contains all of the setup and training guides that we have been creating and the many of you all have been using for your own self paced training by implementing a blank instance of Dynamics AX yourself by either using a Azure hosted environment, or if you have enough horsepower, a local version of Dynamics AX that you can download from Customer/Partner Source.

One new filter option that you can take advantage of with the website is the ability to filter these guides by Design Layout of Walkthrough and Thumbnail guide.

The traditional walkthrough guides are formatted to give you a step by step guide with full screen illustrations of each of the steps to give you a visual guide as to where in the process you are. Each illustration is a great visual reference as to what you should be seeing on the screen and has a description of exactly what you need to do in order to complete the step. This is an ideal way for a novice user to step through the examples within guide.

The thumbnail guides are formatted to give you a step by step guide with thumbnail illustrations of each of the steps to give you a visual guide as to where in the process you are. Each thumbnail has a description of exactly what you need to do in order to complete the step, and is an ideal way for an experienced user to step through the examples.

Also, as we release out the Second Edition of all of the guides then you will also have the ability to access all of the guides as individual Labs which are perfect for student training guides as they are bite sized versions of each of the chapters in the original guides. You can see a couple of them on the site already but there will be more to come.

Additionally the Configuration Blueprints section (http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/all/series_configuration-blueprints) contains all of the guides that are just a little too small to be included in the Bare Bones Configuration Guides or which are worked examples that may span a number of different functional areas.

And the Tips & Tricks section (http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/all/series_tips-and-tricks) contains all of the morsels of information that are too small to even be Configuration Blueprints but too valuable not to forget. Over the next couple of weeks we will be transferring as many of the tips that were on the sister site over here for you all to download, with a big added benefit of indexing these by functional area so that when you are looking for information on Sales Order Management for example the tips will show up alongside all of the other big boy guides (http://shop.dynamicsaxcompanions.com/collections/all/functional-area_sales-order-management) so that it is much easier to track down just the information that you are looking for.

Just as a heads up, if you are an eBook subscriber on the original Dynamics AX Companions website then you will still be able to access all of the guides from there, but by mid-year (hopefully) we will make it possible for you all to grab all of the guides from this site as well. You all will be even luckier because we will be transitioning to an annual membership of $199 a year to access all of the guides through the eBook store, but anyone who has signed up through the eBook subscription on the Dynamics AX companions site (www.dynamicsaxcompanions.com) will have a perpetual license and be able to access the guides for life at no extra charge. That’s a great deal if you ask me.

I hope that you all like the changes that we have made to the eBook store and that it makes it easier for you all to access the content that you need for your Dynamics AX Projects.